People

Areas of Research

What is your main focus on the CMS experiment?

I research the hadronic calorimeter, which is used to find the amounts of energy in particles from all of the high energy interactions.

What inspired you to study particle physics?

While I was in high school, the Tevatron was pushing to discover the top quark, and I remember feeling excited about it. Later, I did a summer internship at Cornell University with their accelerator. At Cornell, I worked on the CLEO Level 3 trigger. That was interesting, but the really intriguing things were the talks and seminars that were organized along with the internship. They were very interesting and I was able to talk to other physicists and students about their research projects.

What is your favorite part about being a scientist?

I really like figuring out new things. Even when other people already understand, it is nice when I discover things for myself. I also like when people ask me what I do, and I get to tell them I work on the Large Hadron Collider.

What about Fermilab do you think surprises most people? What even surprised you?

There is a huge lab out here with all of these exciting experiments. I find out about new experiments every week that I did not know were happening here.

Assuming you already have your laptop in one hand, if you could rescue something from your burning office, what would it be?

I would rescue my lab notebook. I keep all of my important notes about my research in it. A laptop is replaceable, but my notebook has all of my thoughts and ideas. I need that.

What kind of music do you listen to?

I like different kinds of music, but in particular opera, and truthfully, country. I like Andrea Bocelli.